Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

August 17, 2020

Maximizing Education While Minimizing COVID Risk : Priorities and Pitfalls for Reopening Schools

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  • [Preprint, not peer-reviewed] Cohen et al. estimated that 5-42% of schools would have at least one person with active COVID-19 on the first day of arrival, depending on the incidence of COVID-19 in the local community. Using the Covasim agent-based model, they estimate that 10-25% of staff and 6-17% of students would be infected in the first three months in a scenario where all students return to in-person learning without mitigation measures such as face masks, six-foot separation, and handwashing. An approach with only elementary schools returning to in-person on an A/B 2-day a week schedule, while other schools remain remote, would reduce the cumulative risk in school to below 1.2%. They estimated more than seven times as many COVID-19 cases among people in schools if schools reopen at a community incidence rate of 110/100,000 versus 20/10,000.  

Cohen et al. (Aug 13, 2020). Maximizing Education While Minimizing COVID Risk : Priorities and Pitfalls for Reopening Schools. Institute for Disease Modeling. https://covid.idmod.org/data/Maximizing_education_while_minimizing_COVID_risk.pdf